Memoriaf ©Tree/. 63 



Church, and whilst preaching there on Christmas-day, he struck 

 his staff into the ground, which immediately burst into bud and 

 bloom ; eventually it grew into a Thorn-bush, which regularly 

 blossomed every Christmas-day, and became known throughout 

 Christendom as the Glastonbury Thorn. 



"The winter Thorn, which 

 Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord." 



Like the Thorn of Glastonbury, an Oak, in the New Forest, called 

 the Cadenham Oak, produced its buds always on Christmas Day ; 

 and was, consequently, regarded by the country people as a tree 

 of peculiar sanctity. Another miraculous tree is referred to in 

 CoUinson's ' History of Somerset.' The author, speaking of the 

 Glastonbury Thorn, says that there grew also in the Abbey 

 churchyard, on the north side of St. Joseph's Chapel, a miraculous 

 Walnut - tree, which never budded forth before the Feast of 

 St. Barnabas (that is, the nth of June), and on that very day 

 shot forth leaves, and flourished like its usual species. It is 

 strange to say how much this tree was sought after by the cre- 

 dulous ; and though not an uncommon Walnut, Queen Anne, 

 King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the 

 times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of 

 money for small cuttings from the original. 



